At Mouse Design, we’ve spent over a decade solving complex product challenges — from outdoor gear to healthcare product. But more recently, we’ve turned our attention to a new challenge: helping dental schools train students more effectively with realistic dental training teeth.
You won’t find much about them on our website — until now. That’s because our journey into dental education started quietly, through a hands-on collaboration with one of the UK’s most forward-thinking dental schools.
Dental students need to build confidence before they ever touch a real patient. But in many universities, the training teeth used in pre-clinical dental training are basic plastic typodonts that lack realism.
There’s often no tactile feedback when drilling. No sense of transitioning between enamel, dentine, or pulp. No way to simulate the pressure and precision needed in real procedures.
For students preparing for OSCEs and clinical rotations, that’s a serious gap in their learning experience.
That’s where we came in. Working with Professor Cathy Coelho and her team at the University of Plymouth, we were asked to help develop a better solution — one that would deliver more realistic simulation for dental students.
Our job as a product design agency wasn’t just to make a better plastic tooth. It was to co-develop an entirely new dental simulation tool that felt, behaved, and trained like the real thing.
Together with Professor Coelho and with support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), we developed a set of custom dental training teeth that simulate real tooth anatomy and behaviour.
Using additive manufacturing, we engineered teeth with layered structures that replicate:
The result? A set of realistic training teeth for dental students that not only feel right, but also look and behave more like real anatomy.
Our first production run — named Fideliteeth — is now in active use at the University of Plymouth. Since then:
We’re now working closely with educators to develop custom training teeth that align with their course structures and OSCE preparation needs.
We’re not a dental company. We’re a human-centred design agency — and that’s exactly why we’re the right team for this job. We know how to solve real-world problems through great product thinking, materials knowledge, and clever engineering.
The future of dental education is more hands-on, more engaging, and more effective. And we’re proud to be playing a small but meaningful role in that shift.
If you’re working in dental education and want to explore customised dental training solutions, we’d love to hear from you.
